“The doctor said a chilled teether helps. I was going to get one, but with Dad’s problem yesterday and then Olívia’s fall today . . .”
“Fall?”
“Yes, she slipped and hit her head coming out of my office. Kathleen said there was a wet floor sign, but Olívia is sure there wasn’t. I need to check the footage, but my inclination is to believe Olívia.”
“So is mine,” he says, surprising me. “I don’t like your secretary.”
“You don’t like anyone.”
“Almostanyone,” he corrects. “But that’s not what I’m talking about. There’s something off about that woman.” Joaquín has never really liked Kathleen, but since he’s suspicious of humans in general, I never took it too seriously.
“I transferred her today.”
“Because of what happened to Olívia? Do you think she was responsible for removing the wet floor sign?”
“I still don’t know, but her transfer had nothing to do with Olívia. She was becoming inconvenient.”
“She wants you. Anyone can see that.”
“Perhaps, but lately, she had become more explicit about it.”
“Transferring her was the best thing you could have done then,” he says, starting to walk towards the exit. “Check the footage. If she really removed the sign, intending to hurt Olívia, it was a criminal act and the girl should be careful.”
“Joaquín, do you remember what we talked about today?”
“Yes, no investigating your girlfriend . . . unless she gives me reason to.”
Before I can respond, he’s gone.
She hasn’t come down from her room. I’ve been working from home for the last two days, and she’s just slept, disconnected from everything. It’s like her body took advantage of the forced rest to finally surrender.
I’ve checked on her several times. I was tempted to set up the extra baby monitor I have for emergencies to make sure everything is okay, but I don’t have the right to invade her privacy. So every two hours, I quickly go in and check if she’s breathing. Then I quickly back away because the urge to cuddle up behind her in bed is too strong.
I know she’s eaten because the sandwiches and juices I left on the bedside table have been consumed, so maybe she just needs to relax.
Her last year hasn’t been easy. In fact, the last few years.
She received the suitcase brought by the security guard because I heard the door to the room open and close again on the first night she arrived here, but since then, there has been absolute silence.
The twenty-four-hour monitoring period the doctor mentioned has passed, but I’m still trying to be a nice guy and give her space to rest. However, my mind is with her.
It’s already early morning. I took a quick shower, and after giving Nina her last bottle—that she took while still asleep—I came to my room, convincing myself that I shouldn’t go check on Olívia one more time.
If I go and she’s awake, I know how the night will end, and I can’t get closer until everything is clarified. She has the right to know the truth.
That’s my logical side talking. The one that has always been in control of my life. The problem is that at this moment, there’s nothing rational about me. No matter how we started or what led me to seek her out, the truth is that from the moment I laid eyes on Olívia, it stopped being about uncovering Layla’s secrets and became solely about a man wildly attracted to a woman.
As if all the confusion between us wasn’t enough, there’s also the fact that she’s a virgin. Would it be fair to initiate her? She spent the last few years taking care of her sick mother, without any chance of experiencing life. Olívia said she no longer knows what it’s like to go out, laugh, and chat. I know nobody would believe it, but neither do I.
Of course, I didn’t spend my college years as a monk. I went to some parties, dated, had a lot of sex, but I never had fun. I never knew what it was like to relax, because even then, I had already started dedicating myself to the hotels, even before my father had the first stroke.
My intention was, once I graduated, to take a year off to travel.
Sure, I’d already seen the whole world. Mom taught us to fend for ourselves, experience life away from home, with or without them by our side, but my plan was to get away from everything and relax. Do something different from what I had experienced up to that point. Put a backpack on and travel to New Zealand, for example.
Go out without worry, date, and maybe find someone real for a walk together in the future.
But fate had different plans for me. Just a few weeks before finishing my postgraduate studies, when I was already packed, Dad had the stroke.
